African countries welcome growing Chinese presence

October 10, 2012 9:16 am

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By XINHUA, Vehicles drive on the Nairobi-Thika Super Highway constructed by Chinese companies in Nairob/XINHUAHARARE, Oct 10 – Despite spells of criticism on the growing presence of the Chinese in Africa from the Western governments and media, African countries make greater efforts to lure more Chinese investment into the continent.

Tendai Moyo, a Harare-based social commentator, said it is undeniable that while China is extending its genuine philanthropic hand to Africa, the West is busy extending their brazen iron fisted imperial hand that continues to foment a myriad of destabilizing activities in the continent.

Goodwill, mutual respect and the accompanying win-win aspect have become hallmarks of China’s partnership with Africa. This introduces a completely new paradigm and a draught of fresh air to African countries that have been grappling with the effrontery big brother tactics from the United States and its European acolytes, the commentator said.

“It has no debilitating subtle conditionalities designed to enslave its intended beneficiaries or surreptitiously entrap them into a vicious circle of unsustainable debts. It is not meant to be a diabolical springboard to meddle into internal matters of the recipient. Neither is it an instrument of hegemonic expansion but sheer benevolence meant to prop up Africa,” he said.

In an exclusive interview with Xinhua, Zimbabwe’s Economic Planning and Investment Promotion Secretary Desire Sibanda also said that there was a deliberate thrust by Africa to deal with China because of favourable business conditions.

Africa had, through the securitisation of its resources, benefitted more from its relationship with China than with traditional partners such as the World Bank who provided assistance attached with stringent conditions, he said.

“Historically big projects were funded by the World Bank with their conditionalities, but this now gave Africa an opportunity to look East where these conditionalities do not exist. The issue of securitisation of resources whereby China gave assistance in infrastructure development in exchange for raw materials for its fast growing economy was something new and gave developing countries the much needed debt relief,” he said.

He cited countries such as Angola, Rwanda and Zambia where the Chinese were assisting in boosting infrastructure development. “Instead of focusing on trade, they focused on what mattered most in Africa, and that is infrastructure development. Africa is very rich in resources but its infrastructure is very poor, and we need assistance in such areas as energy, water, railways and roads construction,” he said.

As a result of the new arrangement where resources were swopped for infrastructure development assistance, a debt crisis was avoided, Sibanda said.

“What created the debt crisis was that when we were trading and investing with the West, we went for debts and in some cases the debts were for consumption. The coming in of China with their new model of financial assistance, therefore, reduced the level of debt,” he said.

As a developing country, China also understood the needs of developing countries better and to a great extent met them, he added.

Sentimental and historical political links with Africa were also in China’s favour as it had helped a number of liberation movements against colonizers from the West.

“If they were given a choice they would go to China than to the West, and also because of the old feeling that the West are capitalists bent on enriching themselves,” he added.

XINHUA Xinhua News Agency, founded on November 7, 1931, is China’s national news agency as well as a global news and information network. Xinhua has set up a global news and information gathering network, with headquarters in Beijing, 33 domestic bureaus in provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities plus the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao, as well as 140 bureaus in the rest of the world. Xinhua is yet to set up a bureau in Taiwan, where it has posted resident correspondents. Xinhua provides its worldwide subscribers with news and financial information products in the forms of text, photo, graphics, audio, video, and mobile phone text messages 24 hours a day in eight languages: Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese and Japanese.